Site Optimization, What Is The Best Width?
If you have ever worried about optimizing a website or blog, the question always comes up. What is the best screen resolution to optimize for? Today, in 2009 the answer is simple. You should optimize your site for 1024 pixel width.The Old Boring Advice
“You should optimize your site so that the least common denominator has the best usability.”This has a great all inclusive feel good notion to it. I however do not live by those rules. Instead I believe that anybody with a monitor resolution with 800 pixel width can suffer some horizontal scrolling. My visitor demographics concur.
The New Exciting Advice
After getting 480 visitors to my blog since I started using Clicky Analytics I have sufficient information upon which to base my optimization. Not counting resolutions that must be for handheld devices, only 2.2% of my visitors had resolutions of 800 pixels or smaller. Why would I optimize in a way that penalizes 97.8% of my visitors? If you look at the analytics further, you will notice that 12.9% of my visitors had pixel widths of 1024 or smaller.
Optimizing for 87.1% of my users by making the width of my blog optimized for 1280 pixels is very tempting. What do you think I should do with the optimization?
